It is always a good thing when the volunteers show up during "stranding season," the anomaly of nature that takes shape from November through the end of the year on Cape Cod beaches, where rare turtles stung by the cold water wash up on shore. It is particularly good when college students are in the mix of volunteers, says Robert Prescott, director of the Mass. Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary. That is because they tend to be better equipped to hike such rustic turf as The Great Island, a sandy peninsula off of Wellfleet.

"It's a difficult area for us to cover because it's a three-mile walk that can only be covered one-way," said Prescott. "We tend to send the younger people."

The calculation worked out particularly well on November 16 when Victoria Snyder, a junior at The College of Saint Rose, took part in a weekend field trip and quickly spotted a Kemp's ridley sea turtle washed ashore and helpless. The find was a rare sighting of a rare reptile: the Kemp's ridley is the most endangered of all sea turtles. Snyder and her fellow students, fulfilling physical education requirements, were led by Brian Jensen, associate professor of biology, a frequent Audubon volunteer who hoped to show the benefits of working in nature. He couldn't have scripted it better if he had tried.

"It was really really exciting," said Snyder, a biology major whose sighting triggered a rapid response by Audubon officials who recover perhaps 125 stranded Kemp's ridleys each season. "It took me a while to see what a big deal this was."

She might have missed the turtle altogether or arrived on the scene a few hours later and too late to save its life. Instead, her finding set in motion a lengthy process involving Mass. Audubon volunteers and the New England Aquarium to bring the turtle, named Alfalfa for the tuft of seaweed on his head, back to health and back to warmer waters.

Read here to learn what happened to Alfalfa:http://blogs.strose.edu/good-to-know-saint-rose-biology-student-rescues-worlds-rarest-turtle-new-england-aquarium-says-thank-you/